Angela Refuses to Be Offended

Apr 10, 2007

RUSH: Angela, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: I just want to shout out to Thomas E. Mitchell at the Community Journal in Milwaukee. I just want to say that I am just so tired of these types of things coming up because — well, I’m black, and I agree with you whatever you said about some things you shouldn’t just pay attention to, and to just devalue one’s self and overvalue another human being by giving them words to just strike you down to stop you cold, it’s ridiculous. I’m really sick and tired of it. It was quite embarrassing whenever the dust-up came about, Barack Obama being ‘articulate,’ and all that.

RUSH: When Bill Cosby went out on numerous occasions and attempted to tell certain audience members, you know, it’s time to stop using these kinds of words at home —

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: — he was tarred and feathered, correct?

CALLER: That’s correct.

RUSH: And he was one of their heroes.

CALLER: But what it is, is the devaluing of one’s self, and I really hope that people are paying attention to this. The reason why black people don’t care if another black person says these very same things is because — and I can’t say this is true across the board for all black people, but I believe it’s true for some, is that — the black people that say it doesn’t have the value in their minds to even care about what they may say against another black person, but if a white person — overvaluing another human being, if a white person says it — then it’s, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe it,’ and it’s just, again, devaluing one’s self and overvaluing another human being, and this is just ridiculous. I could care less what Don Imus has to say! I can care less what anyone says. I don’t even know if Don Imus is a racist more so than he is an idiot, but I could care less what he has to say. I could care less what a racist has to say about me. This is just going… This is ridiculous and I’m really sick and tired of being treated this way. I’m black. I’m part of the black community, the black race, and to have to be looked at as if I care if somebody white calls me the N-word? I could care less. I will not give anybody the power to strike me down with words, ever, and I teach my children the exact same thing. Who cares? So I just wanted to make that very clear.

RUSH: Well, that’s amazing. You’re pretty advanced, because we’re in the context of talking about words. Now, your employer says it or something like that, it’s a different situation, but we’re talking about people you don’t know from a whole town far across the country from where you are, and all that. Look, I gotta take a break here, Angela, do you have a couple minutes you can hang on?

CALLER: I can. I can hold on.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that, mucho thanks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We welcome back to the microphones on the EIB Network Angela in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I was very moved by what you’ve said, because, frankly, I wish more people were that way. It took me a long time to learn. I used to be so affected by what other people thought of me, particularly people that didn’t know me, and those who did. For the longest time it kept me imprisoned, because I spent so much time trying to please people I thought didn’t like me or thought there was something odd about me and I was just surrendering the power to be who I am to all these people who themselves were screwed up. It just was a mess, and I just finally decided (I forget what it was that triggered it), ‘I’m just not going to waste time being offended by this stuff particularly when it’s words and especially when I know it’s not true.’ Why get all worried about accusations about me of things that aren’t true? Those are the things that you just let bounce off, and that’s essentially what you said. You don’t have time for this.

CALLER: I don’t have time for it, and I think that we waste too much time on it. We have children, and how do we want our children to grow up, if we teach them to believe that certain people, white people, matter to the point where… We’re all God’s children, so every person matters. I look at every person and see God. God made the different races for his pleasure and would hope that we would join in that pleasure of people of different races. However, we can also be seduced by evil and teach our children that certain people, if they say this about you, it’s an egregious crime and you shouldn’t take that. You should be offended — and it’s just not the truth, and I’m just not buying into it anymore.

RUSH: Let me ask you a question, though, and I don’t mean to put you on the spot with this.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: This is about the Rutgers ladies basketball team.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Did you happen to see their press conference today?

CALLER: Not really. I saw it, but I just really —

RUSH: Well, it went on for close to 45 minutes, and they had the coach, C. Vivian Stringer. She spoke the longest, and she was very eloquent, but she made it clear — made it very, very clear — that their joy had been stripped from them, the championship that they played for, the joy had been stripped because —

CALLER: That’s too bad.

RUSH: — they were called these names and so forth, and it had become a national thing, that everybody was now looking at them this way, or at least had those thoughts about them put in their heads because of the national specter of this story, and a couple of the team members went up and spoke briefly, and the college president. They turned this into a big event for the whole university, for Rutgers. My question to you is (sigh). Well, it’s impossible for you to answer because you don’t know these women on the team, but I just wanted you to try to relate your own philosophy to theirs. Everybody made it clear here that this really bothered them.

CALLER: Well, first of all, if I had a daughter on that team, she would not have appeared on there. I would have told her, ‘You will not attend that press conference.’ Well, I wouldn’t even have to tell her that. She would know that she wouldn’t attend anything like that, because she would know that Don Imus does not carry her joy in his mouth or in his pocket. She wouldn’t have attended that, and she would have kept her joy and her happiness. She probably wouldn’t have paid attention. She would not have paid any attention to what Don Imus had said.

RUSH: You are —

CALLER: This is ridiculous.

RUSH: You are a brilliant woman.

CALLER: Well…

RUSH: Your daughter may have been made to appear, regardless what would have been in her heart.

CALLER: (laughing) No, she would not have appeared!

RUSH: Well, you never know —

CALLER: Ha, ha, ha! I do know.

RUSH: They were waiting for this opportunity.

CALLER: I know.

RUSH: You know, universities want to take the opportunity here for as much PR as they can get. That is such a great answer. To let somebody they don’t even know take their joy away, that’s a shame. That’s horrible if that actually happened.

CALLER: Again, it is more about devaluing one’s self and overvaluing someone else. That’s what it really boils down to me. That’s what I see. I just can’t take part in that, and I would hope that enough black people would express this, because I know a lot of people feel this way. I’m not the only black person that feels this way, and I would hope that enough of us, and I heard John McWhorter, I believe that’s his name, talk about the silent black majority. Well, it is time for us to stop being silent about this because you have people running around acting like we’re so defeated. We’re just defeated little human beings, and any little thing can just rock our poor little world. I’m sick and tired of being portrayed like that. I’m really sick and tired of it. So thank you.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad you called, Angela. You are a brilliant woman, and your children are very fortunate.

CALLER: (Laughs) Well, thank you.

RUSH: How old are they?

CALLER: I have children ages twenty-five to three years old.

RUSH: Wow, twenty-five to three!

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: You are really brilliant.

CALLER: (Laughing.) Thank you.

RUSH: All right, well, I appreciate the call. Thank you so much, and feel free to call back any time you want.

CALLER: You’re welcome. Thanks, Rush.

RUSH: You bet. Jennifer in Andover, New Jersey, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Good afternoon. I just wanted to keep going with what you were talking about being offended and what the last caller — and she obviously sees herself as being an American and not just being, you know, a black American or pigeonhole herself into a little group — because I think that’s another big issue here was what you’re talking about with the liberals wanting us all to be little multicultural groups, and I think it’s splitting ourselves up into teeny, tiny little factions so everyone is getting offended in our own little tiny group instead of maybe if we all saw each other as being — the common denominator as being — American.

RUSH: Well, but, you know, the root of this, of people sequestering themselves into groups is — and the Offended and so forth — is actually victimology, because victimology’s become profitable. If you can proclaim yourself a victim of some injustice perpetrated by your country or by the majority or whatever, and form a group on that base, then you can find a way to get benefits for it or redress that is financial in some way, and it also allows for people who knowingly choose victim status to excuse their own lack of excellence or performance or even effort.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — in trying to make themselves, because they say, ‘Well, I can’t get anywhere. The world is stacked against me. The country is unfair. It’s injustice here, injustice there. I’m an official victim,’ and there’s a political party and an ideology that has promoted this, and that’s liberalism, because there are votes among victims.

CALLER: Every little group feels threatened, so they’re all trying to claim a stake here. Everyone is pulling. It’s not a polarized nation; it’s a Swiss cheese nation; everyone’s pulling it until there’s holes in it, and my fear is everyone’s pulling, pulling, pulling. If we stopped and saw ourselves as American, we’d have a common denominator. You know, why can’t we all just get along? Well, maybe if we all got along as Americans and the rest of the world sees us as just kind of splitting apart. No one’s outraged when they’re calling Condoleezza Rice names and they’re calling George Bush a terrorist, because Condoleezza Rice doesn’t identify herself as part of the black culture. She’s an American. So where is the outrage at that? Where is the outrage in our national leaders, because we don’t identify ourselves as being Americans! It’s just one group. You know, maybe we’d all stick up for everyone — stick up for each other — if we saw each other as Americans.

RUSH: There’s a reason for this though, Jennifer. Snerdley keeps telling me, ‘Yeah, we’re going to reach a tipping point. People are going to get fed up with all this group stuff and all the Offended and all the Concerned out there, and they’re finally going to get sick of waking up every day on TV and watching and hearing that this group or that individual, whatever, is offended and we gotta do something about it.’ The problem is that there are certain people, Sharpton and Jackson the latest examples, who are allowed to say whatever they want and nobody’s going to challenge them because nobody wants to be called a racist, and if you are merely critical — you don’t have to call anybody names; you don’t have to even make fun them or do jokes; if you’re just critical — then somebody is going to come along and call you a racist. A lot of people don’t want to go through that. I’m talking about average Americans, not media figures and leaders. They just don’t want to deal with it. They don’t want to be in the controversy of being called a racist or a bigot or any of that kind of thing, because it destroys the reputation, and so there’s silence when all this stuff happens.

That’s why it continues to devolve. As is the case with everything, there will be a tipping point. I don’t know when. It’s just like I’m convinced there’s going to be a tipping point with the way the Democrats are handling US foreign policy, the way they’re dealing with the troops and so forth. There will be a tipping point on this, just as there was for them after Vietnam, when they lost. They thought they’ve done the greatest thing in the world. They still think it’s one of their days of shining light, the glory days of their past, and end up losing to Nixon, McGovern did in a landslide and they’re setting themselves up for that again. As I say, I don’t know when, but it will be sooner rather than later. There are always tipping points. But the thing that you have to keep in mind is this kind of story, the Drive-By Media loves this stuff. This has knocked Anna Nicole Smith off the lead story ranks. (Well, for a while. She’s getting it back now.) This is made to order for the 24/7 news machine that’s out there, these kinds of stories that create the chaos and the tumult. Anyway, I appreciate the call, Jennifer.